- Lev Sternberg
Lev (Chaim Leiba) Yakovlevich Sternberg (
May 4 ,1861 ,Zhitomir ,Ukraine -August 14 ,1927 , Dudergof, now Mozhaiskii, Russia) was a Ukrainian ethnographer who from 1889 to 1897 studied the Nivkhs (Gilyaks),Oroks , and Ainu onSakhalin [Smolyak, p.178] and inSiberia for theAmerican Museum of Natural History , inNew York City . He was active in Jewish social movements and a devoted Marxist. Fact|date=March 2007 Sternberg majored in physics and mathematics at Enters Petersburg University. He later majored in law at Enters Novorossiisk University. He was an earlyMarxist activist joining "Narodnaya Volya " (The People's Will) and edited the marxist publication "Vestnik Narodnoi Voli" (TheNarodnaya Volya Herald). Sternberg and Grant, p.xi] He was arrested by Russian authorities April 27, 1886 for participation in "The People's Will" which was labeled an anti-tsarist terrorist organization spending three years in anOdessa jail. [http://anthro.amnh.org/anthropology/FindAidXML/ShternbergL.xml The Papers of Lev Shternberg, 1861-1927] (retrieved Nov. 2007) American Museum of Natural History Division of Anthropology Archives. http://anthro.amnh.org/. New York, New York ] Lev Sternberg was then exiled to the Sakhalin Penal Colony for a ten year prison sentence. He was deported at Odessa on the boat "Peterburg" on March 19, 1889 arriving in Port Aleksandrovsk, Sakhalin May 19, 1889. [ Sternberg and Grant, p.xxxi] Sternberg agitated authorities due to his activism in prisoners' and indigenous peoples rights. Authorities sent him to the remote community of Viakhtu, 100 km north of the Port Aleksandrovsk where he first began his ethnographic fieldwork on theNivkhs ,Oroks , and Ainu. He would return home but be put under house arrest for the first few years. Lev Sternberg was an important Russian figure in the then new field ofanthropology . Sternberg, with the help ofVladimir Bogoraz organized the fist Russian ethnography center atSaint Petersburg State University after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Merriam-Webster, see index:Lev Sternberg ]Footnotes
References
*Merriam-Webster (1995) "Merriam-Webster's Biographical Dictionary"; 1st edition. Merriam-Webster. 1184p ISBN 0877797439
*Shternberg, Lev Iakovlevich and Bruce Grant. (1999) "The Social Organization of the Gilyak". New York:American Museum of Natural History . Seattle:University of Washington Press 280p. ISBN 029597799X
*Smolyak, A. V. (2001) "Traditional Principles of Natural Resources Use among Indigenous Peoples of the Lower Amur River". Journal of Legal Pluralism Num. 46ISSN 0732-9113External links
* http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:X8Nuf-ELE00J:www.infonor.dk/Sternberg.htm+Lev+Sternberg&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=17&gl=us
* http://memory.pvost.org/pages/shteinberglya.html
* http://www.pgpb.ru/cd/primor/first/shter.htm
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